BJP wants to replicate Assam formula in Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls

Uttar Pradesh had contributed to BJP’s win in 2014 Lok Sabha elections while Assam, the party thinks, will help it win the 2017 Assembly polls in UP itself. The BJP won 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats from UP. And now Assam has shown the ruling party the way to replicate its win in UP.

Just like Assam, the BJP is seeking to polarise votes in UP on the basis of soft Hindutva, keeping its focus on development and good governance intact. In the Northeastern state, the party had highlighted the “illegal immigrants” issue without harping openly on Hindu-Muslim divide. Now, it has clearly adopted the same strategy in UP.

The party, while highlighting the Kairana exodus and Dadri lynching issues in the national executive committee meeting, has said that these are matters relating to law and order. But in reality, soft Hindutva is at play.

Briefing the media in Allahabad on the first day of the meeting, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad vehemently denied that the party was seeking to polarise the voters. He reiterated that be it Kairana or Mathura, which witnessed violence resulting in the death of two senior police officers recently, they were the cases of Akhilesh Yadav government’s failures on law and order front.

“We don’t speak about communalism but about national interest,” Prasad said, and quoted party president Amit Shah as stating that “the migration happening in Kairana due to violence is a matter of serious concern. There is an atmosphere of violence. The lack of development and the lack of governance in the biggest state of India that is Uttar Pradesh is becoming a matter of serious concern”.

In Assam, the BJP had adopted a similar strategy. Instead of naming Bangladeshi Muslims for the influx in the state, where the minorities constitute 35 per cent of the population – next only to Jammu and Kashmir – it limited itself to blaming “illegal immigrants”.

Also read: What BJP is planning at Allahabad National Executive meet

It served a dual purpose for the BJP - without diluting its agenda of development and governance, the party also heightened the deep resentment of the locals against the Muslim immigrants. It helped in consolidating the Hindu votes for the BJP and its two allies – the AGP and BPF – by deepening the political divide.

No wonder then, BJP’s win in Assam and the strategy it devised occupied the maximum space in the political resolution adopted at the end of the two-day executive committee meeting on June 13. Dwelling on identity politics of the state, the resolution stated: “As important as the problem of underdevelopment is the threat of demographic invasion the state has faced from an unchecked infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh for decades on. It has reached Himalayan proportions and signalled a death-knell to Assam’s identity, culture and traditions besides severely affecting state’s economy and people’s livelihood. Successive governments have turned a blind eye to this problem with an eye on their vote banks. The then ruling party in the state and its chief minister have gone to the ridiculous extent of denying existence of even a single infiltrator in the state."

“The BJP has gone to the people promising them freedom from poverty, backwardness and underdevelopment; and security from infiltrators and their champions and apologists,” the resolution added.

In Assam, the BJP and its allied partners got two thirds majority with 86 of the total 126 seats. The BJP itself won 60 seats and together the three parties garnered 44 per cent of the votes, which is 8 per cent more than the votes it had got in 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Thus, with development and good governance as its main plank, the BJP wishes to repeat Assam in UP by sprinkling some grains of soft Hindutva to consolidate votes of the majority community. It is most likely to also replicate Assam by announcing a chief ministerial candidate. There it was Sarbananda Sonowal, here it may be any one from the large pool of senior leaders.

The BJP is already trying to cut into Mayawati’s vote bank by poaching the Dalits. It is also simultaneously hitting out Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP by alleging that it is indulging in minority, read Muslim appeasement. By adopting this strategy, it is positioning itself as the alternative to the SP, trying to relegate the BSP to the third place. It is a totally new approach which it has adopted in UP, hoping to snatch power from Akhilesh Yadav.

So far so good. But will the BJP manage to shrug off the temptation of playing hardcore politics till the end of the polls?